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Senator Charles E.

Schumer, Chairman, Senator Lamar Alexander, Ranking Member, and members of the United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration 305 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 April 24, 2012 Dear Senators, Thank you for the opportunity to offer these comments in support of S219, the "Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act" in conjunction with the Committee's April 25, 2012 hearing. In the spirit of this legislation, whose simplicity is reflected in its brevity, our comments can be summarized quickly: The system of campaign finance disclosure mandated by this bill offers the kind of operational efficiency and benefits to transparency that have been demonstrated over many years at many levels of government. It is no longer acceptable for a legislative body at the Federal level to refuse to adopt this simple process for ensuring the public's right to know. For nearly 30 years the Center for Responsive Politics has been committed to providing the public with the most comprehensive and reliable information available about how our national politics are financed. One of the clearest successes of the disclosure process has been the conversion to electronic filing of campaign finance information at the Federal Election Commission. In just the last ten days, thousands of committees representing presidential and House campaigns, national state and local party organizations and other political committees have filed reports of their financial activity during the most recent month or quarter. These reports, containing nearly $250 million in receipts, were available to the public within minutes of their submission. The benefits of this legislation to both the committees submitting their reports and to the public receiving the information are clear. The reporting provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act have consistently recognized that timely disclosure of campaign receipts and disbursements was a critical element in the Act's success. The requirements for pre-election filings, along with quick disclosure of contributions and expenditures close to elections, have been fundamental to the process since the 1970s. Throughout this time Congress has modified the process of disclosure in order to take advantage of technological changes that improved the public's access to information. In permitting the use of fax machines in submitting election-sensitive documents and in mandating electronic filing, Congress's legislative changes have recognized that modern techniques must be used to make the principle of transparency a reality.

The benefits to those who must file become obvious whenever the current process is described. Virtually every Senate campaign maintains its financial records in some electronic system, nearly all of them using software either purchased privately or provided at no cost by the FEC with built in capabilities to submit the information electronically. Only Senate campaigns must then manage the logistics of printing the often thousands of pages of information these files contain and delivering them to the Secretary of the Senate -- who then transmits images to the FEC so it can begin the laborious and time-consuming process of returning those pages to the electronic form in which they were originally created. This wholly unnecessary process adds expense for both the committee and taxpayers while also introducing more opportunity for clerical errors with potentially important consequences. The waste inherent in this process is all the more glaring because the system for receiving and processing filings electronically has been operational for nearly a generation. We are now witnessing the fourth presidential campaign and seventh House campaign since electronic filing was mandated in those races. The electronic transmission of this information is routine and widespread. The California Voter Foundation, in a 2008 summary of state level systems of campaign finance disclosure, found that even four years ago 24 states mandated electronic filing for all state legislative campaigns and six more required electronic filing for all state wide races. Processes that work effectively in state assembly races throughout the country would surely be manageable for U.S. Senate campaigns as well. In an era where we rightly demand more efficient operation of all government services, it is incumbent upon the Senate to join the rest of the political community in using common technologies to inform the public.